:rolleyes: Right. Asking you to clarify a couple of important terms is “semantic masturbation”.
Using these explanations, I can sincerely state that nobody is, has ever been, or ever will be “convinced” of anything. Everybody is always under some coercion of some outside force.
If God is the absolute ‘everything’, what exactly is it about his truth that is so ‘bad’? It seems you already have your own answer as to what the point of life is… why bother with the God part?
-Justhink
Apologies… I wasn’t meaning to run both sides with that.
If I ask God to prove himself to me by imbuing me with all of his truth right now, what prevents it?
It ultimately reduces to negating my value or Gods value. If I considered Gods judgement absolute, I may as well take a hike right now (he doesn’t give a rats ass about me). If I assert my own value, I have to conclude that God does not possess absolute truth and that the concept itself is corrupt; which disproves the rationality I’m using to make the conclusion (If I believe god exists). The God concept can only be solved in death. It’s really that simple.
-Justhink
One one hypothesis, the fact of his nonexistence. On another, the fact that He isn’t subject to your orders.
I do not see why His existence and the idea that He imbued all humans with intrinsic value are mutually contradictory in your mind, justhink. Or do you require an absoluteness of your own existence in order to have value. I’ll give you a clue – no phenomenally-based metaphysic considers you to have any value whatsoever. You’re a contingent coincidence on a minor planet in a suburban solar system in one fairly typical spiral galaxy, and when you cease to exist, the universe as a whole will not notice.
On the other hand, IMHO, God will, and will grieve that you didn’t accept His offer of life everlasting.
Way to avoid the challenges posed to the idea…
—Or do you require an absoluteness of your own existence in order to have value.—
The answer is: no. Value does not require “absolute” value (whatever THAT is).
—I’ll give you a clue – no phenomenally-based metaphysic considers you to have any value whatsoever.—
Yet I, and others can consider Justthink and you to have value: is that not enough? Is that too pathetic for you? Not good enough?
Just as an aside, I already believe in God. But I’d become much more religious if he were to publicly do something to prove his existence beyond a doubt. One giant lightning bolt into John Ashcroft’s forehead, for instance, would go a long way for fortifying my faith.
You listening, God? Taking notes? Good. 
“”"""“I do not see why His existence and the idea that He imbued all humans with intrinsic value are mutually contradictory in your mind, justhink.”""""
It’s a matter of the value of truth itself, rather than what you wrote here. My value is irrelevant if truth has no inherent value. Any system in which someone spends eternal time in damnation (I understand that’s a biblical context); renders truth itself as absolutely superficial to ‘might makes right’. Truth cannot be weaker than will, in order for any of this to have meaning. Many of the monotheistic rationalizations argue that a person’s refusal to see truth is somehow stronger than truth - or that it’s actually possible for truth to be unredemptive of everyone, over an infinite course of time. I see this type of rationalization as instantly invoking the rationality of non-existence over existence as the only possible act that is rational, the rest just falls right off the axiomic grid.
To even comprehend that a lack of truth is a ‘persons fault’ is to deny the absolute power that truth has when one is exposed to it, and to that degree is to deny the intent behind the abstraction of truth. To imagine some being possessing absolute truth denying anyones request for the truth, smells really funny.
What it shows is that the power of this truth is a vacuum in a vacuum - just empty space that pressurized form moves to. It’s smoke and mirrors. The truth becomes the carrot and not a sense of meaning of the entire dynamic of everything occurring within the stadium. It’s using silence and applying pressure to manufacture uninherent power; which proves that seperation (with one of the objects in control of the other) is ultimately truth.
It proves that purpose of action (“That’s meaningful because I did that”) is more valuable than the action of purpose (“I do that because it’s meaningful”). The first one requires no work, the second one requires work – you actually have to think about what is meaningful before you act or engage yourself. In the first one… “if the sun shines, God exists and it’s meaningful” is great for survival in this one shot here, but I shudder to think of how much greater my ‘might’ in life would be were I to engage in what is most obvious and simple - that belief is more important than truth and that action is more important than purpose. It’s so close and so easy and ‘everybody’ does it, yet without the luxury of my understanding of how to apply these negations to extract/ trap energy from others to create a hunger and need for reclaiming what they believe was already and rightfully theirs (system dynamics as people too)
It’s all just misdirection - I rarely see moral transfer. The thing that saddens me the most is that I know I can do it so well. Everything that makes me cry about existence is the one thing I know will work for me; all I have to do is build the structure, cross the line and let habit take care of the rest - complete retirement.
One thing I feel certain about the nature of truth is that everybody will recieve it regardless of the path they choose here.
To take comfort in a God that punishes people for something greater than this life, is to deny everything I know about truth that keeps me here, aware of myself. Yet triumph in this life finds those who apply truth as misdirection, happiness from not knowing it. There is no system ‘out there’ to keep truth from people who have exploited it for gain here; there is no system ‘out there’ which requires experiential suffering to know, understand and embody truth - truth here is earned through suffering; truth ‘out there’ is free. If it’s not free ‘out there’; uncoersive, absolute undeniability and universal redmption of all knowledge of folly - then the struggle to embody truth here is irrational, as material aquisition is the only absolute; primacy and proof of itself regardless of the direction used to get there. It proves that truth is irrational and that those who observe truth from untruth are delusional in the context of aquisition methodology.
Truth infused with technology does not require suffering to experience. The work of communicating the symbols is reduced to instantaneous levels; to the extent that even a ‘dog’ can use it; absolute truth possesses absolute efficiency of understanding; which means that those who live the high life here, and then die will awaken to truth without having ever endured suffering; it’s the seething smugness of someone who broke every moral code in the book, and in the end adapts all the lessons learned through personal sufferring from a book. “Yeah, what I did was pretty bad; hmm… get over it, we all have the same things now… it’s a good thing you ‘truth’ people did all that work; an asshole like me would have never found this stuff out.”
In spite of the fury of this dynamic; truth does not evade or discriminate - over here where it is not contained in one mind; it is a resource to be exploited. To make living life rational in here, truth must be unhidden all-permeating and undiscriminating ‘out there’ (or somewhere). If it is out there and undescriminating; then abusing it for glory ‘in here’ doesn’t matter. Life urges people to exploit each-other in order to possess both happiness and attractiveness to and from others. I can’t come to terms with that truth; the easy road is to make others suffer and apply misdirection. The biblical God displays this dynamic, which to me is detestful even though absolute reason will redeem every combination of act, including those who thrived on the misery of everybody and never once suffered before or after redemption.
That’s the exciting vision if there is a truth which exists to make living life a rational act.
If that truth doesn’t exist; then living life cannot be a rational act.
-Justhink
“”""""One thing I feel certain about the nature of truth is that everybody will recieve it regardless of the path they choose here.
To take comfort in a God that punishes people for something greater than this life, is to deny everything I know about truth that keeps me here, aware of myself.
absolute reason will redeem every combination of act, including those who thrived on the misery of everybody and never once suffered before or after redemption.
To make living life rational in here, truth must be unhidden all-permeating and undiscriminating ‘out there’ (or somewhere).""""""
The other system which attempts a happy-feely on this observation is the concept of karma. For absolute truth to make sense; karma is not a necessity, suffering is not a necessity.
The bhuddist philosphy attempts to rationalize living life with the idea that all paths must be the same - this just isn’t true, all one needs is to have truth shown upon them, or to be bathed in it; regardless of what they’ve done or where they stand. To picture someone or some system in nature which decides whether to shine it here or there, or whether to move the river when someone comes to bathe in it, or is pushed in it… is just silly.
It denies the existence of truth.
-Justhink
This is the most severe thought virus I know^^^^
Not well written =)
Umm… there is still a path where the trend continues though.
I’ve been trying to decide whether to explore it for three years now.
-Justhink
BlackKnight wrote:
I suppose that depends on what you mean by “clarify”.
Then is it fair to say that, in your view, you are morally helpless?
“”""""“Yet I, and others can consider Justthink and you to have value: is that not enough? Is that too pathetic for you? Not good enough?”"""""""
Says the slavemaster to their complaining slaves…
-Justhink
—I suppose that depends on what you mean by “clarify”. —
I think the beef is: if you allow people to get away with couching their arguements in circular or non-cognitive (or otherwise unintelligible definitions), anything goes. You can tell us that we’re free moral agents and vaguely try to ascribe some sort of good connotation to that concept. But it matters not a whit if you can’t even explain what a free moral agent actually is and how it is different from what you call a “robot” (which again has the same sorts of vague negative connotations without any real justification of why).
That’s not even getting into the important line of questioning about whether knowing knowledge is really akin to violating anyone’s agency: forcing them to act or think a certain way, especially when the particular agent would very much LIKE to have that knowledge.
At least arguements to the effect of: you wouldn’t want god to force you to be a good person… (really? Why not? And how could a omnipotent creator possibly avoid completely controlling what sort of person you end up being? Why would that even matter to god, who already must know our nature no matter what context its placed in) make some sort of surface sense, even if they fall apart on inspection.
But it seems quite happless to argue that mere knowledge of god’s existence violates anyone’s agency. Does knowledge of evolution violate my agency? Knowledge of quantum mechanics? Both of those things, especially in their impersonality, are far more complex, suprising, and shocking than the existence of an omni-everything-is-easily-explained by ultimate reference to god, and somehow they ENHANCE our agency, not detract from it.
So, if there is a god, why does god need leave open the truth of his existence? Why is that even a viable question? Why are there atheists at all? Why not just good people/bad people, making choices? What is the point of deluding people?
Apos wrote:
But the gall of it is that you like having it both ways! 
You don’t mind demanding perfect clarity for “free moral agent” or “robot”, but you proceed yourself with your own reckless qualifiers, leaving “vague negative connotations” and “real justification” completely undefined. The implied set of rules is that I must be perfect and you may be wishy-washy.
It is not a matter of knowing, but of being forced to know. It is like the difference between voluntary charity and socialism. You cannot be, in any real sense, charitable when you’ve freely offered nothing to anyone. You cannot be morally free when your morality is acted out on your behalf.
There is much being made about signs in the sky and so forth, but unless God’s essence is magic, then those signs are moot. If instead God is a free moral agent, then what matters are freedom and volition.
There is no reason that an atheist cannot be morally upright and closer to Godliness than a self-righteous “believer”. Why conflate intellectual knowledge with moral imperative?
“Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” — Jesus
Depending on the context given to God, the intellect can be irrelevant. An autistic child can be more Godly than an accomplished genius. What do you suppose Jesus meant when He said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”?
And please, answer honestly. Leave any snideness aside.
It would have to be something that was experienced by everyone, everywhere. In essence, something that was not possible any other way than coming directly from God.
And that would be what, exactly?
—You don’t mind demanding perfect clarity for “free moral agent” or “robot”, but you proceed yourself with your own reckless qualifiers, leaving “vague negative connotations” and “real justification” completely undefined.—
Give me a break, I am rubber you are glue? If you need those to be defined (and we both know that you don’t), I’d be happy to. People put positive associations on “freedom” and negative ones on “robots” despite the fact that both uses of the words are almost completely prejorative and unestablished in this case (since their potentially justied use rely on a fuller account of what you might be talking about).
So, no, you can’t start complaining that no one can define what “is” is just to get out of having to explain a concept that you’ve been swing around as an all-purpose answer to everything.
If all you have to come back with is “what does “an” mean?” “What does “everything” mean?” “What does “having to” mean?” then don’t waste your time: crashing wit like that should be saved for the Apollo theater.
— You cannot be morally free when your morality is acted out on your behalf.—
Again, you are using a bait and switch. You can’t make an arguement about knowing and then justify it in terms of not wanting to forced people’s choice. They are not the same things. It’s like arguing that if I tell a child that feeding posion to a dog will kill them, I have somehow FORCED the child not to feed poison to dogs. No: whether or not it chooses to is a factor of ITS sense of values and whether the outcome (killing the dog) is right or wrong.
—There is no reason that an atheist cannot be morally upright and closer to Godliness than a self-righteous “believer”. Why conflate intellectual knowledge with moral imperative?—
This is just sloppy. I didn’t make any arguements to effect of WHO would make better or worse choices (whose character was better), but rather noted that people always have more potential to make BETTER choices when they are informed. When I am trying to make a choice, I’d like to know about it’s context and consequences, and to the degree with which you restrict my knowledge, or even mislead me, you do me and my will to act morally a disservice.
—“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”?—
Jesus was anti-intellectual (which makes quite a lot of sense if his major opponents were educated people who believed, GASP, that stoning unruly children to death went a little too far)? It’s an unfortunate theme that runs throughout the bible.
I sincerely think that the subtext was that its easier to get children to believe something is true, irregardless of whether or not it is. So of course people with new philosophies will always think highly of children as pupils, just as Socrates loved his unchallenging yes-men, whether they realize this or not.
—And please, answer honestly. Leave any snideness aside.—
I find it hard to do since it seems from my perspective that you’ve already broken that faith in this case.
It seems that Lib is trying to say that if Yaweh came down and spoke to us, and then directly and obviously affected things around us to the point that we were convinced of his existence it somehow robs us of free will. This is not so. Heck, according to the text “The Bible”, this god spoke to the first people all of the time. He’d come down and talk to Adam and Eve and Cain and Able regularly:
If this account is to be believed. it looks like this god is perfectly able to do something obvious (cause pain for example), explain why he is doing it (i.e. speak), and leave no doubt of his existence. After Adam and Eve and Cain and Able all knew about him were they robbed of free will?
If a god came to everyone at the same time for a nice sit down, a tour of space and time, an explanation of the need for death and pain, a clarification on his ideas on proper punishments (i.e. is there a hell where people suffer for relative infinitie periods of time) for those whose actions he is against, and a clear statement of which religion (if any) is the proper one, I would take that as proof of his existence. This would in no way rob me of free will any more then finding out if I murder someone in a police station they will arrest me.
Even once I was convinced of his existence I could still decide whether or not to worship him. This god seems to fear people with knowledge. He was planning on letting humans live for ever in Eden, but once they gained some knowledge that he was privy too, he decided that they should experience pain and death.
If free will exists then new and conclusive information does not destroy it. Prove to me you exist and then I will believe you exist. Then explain what you have done and I’ll decide whether you are worthy of worship, respect, or didain. If this god really wanted us to choose to love him then no hell would be required at all. Punishing us if we don’t believe is more like the gun to the head analogy, regardless of whether we know for sure if it’s going to happen or not.
If a guy decides he’s going to shoot me if I don’t behave a certain way, I’d much prefer I know for sure that I’m going to get shot as opposed to not knowing if the gunman even exists, nor having any credible information about how he wanted me to behave. Or suppose I got 50 different phone calls telling me to do 50 different things or I’ll get shot. Now assume I know that there can only be one gunmen. I now have to pick which phone call was the REAL blackmail call or suffer pain. Somehow not knowing if the bullet even exists doesn’t seem like all that great of a benefit. Similarly, if I’m going to burn for not behaving in a certain manner, and 50 different people tell me 50 different ways are the “right” (result in not burning) way but only one is correct, then not knowing does not seem to be any great prize even if you call it free will.
DaLovin’Dj
Well, it could manifest in a number of ways I suppose. For instance, if God could inject imagery and sound into everyones consciousness explaining the origin and nature of the universe complete with a total history of existence that would probably convince almost everyone. Basically only something the true God could accomplish.
Additionally, being God and all, he could simply will it to happen and it would.
I also would like to know why your god used to show up all the time (forcing people to know), but stopped doing so. Your god (who would torture us eternally for non-belief) feels comfortable sending to hell people whom (by your dogma) he created with the ability to point out that no evidence exists for said god.
Sorry, if your god made us with reason and would give us eternal punishment for using it, I have no use for the monster.
Sorry, but Godliness is not a compliment considering the attrocities this god commited according to the christian bible.
Examples of god’s cruelty from the bible
“Truth in matters of religion is simply the opinion that has survived.”
-Oscar Wilde